Stay Informed

Bryan Fischer

As we noted earlier today, the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer has claimed that both the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the end of the ban on women serving in combat positions will deter so many volunteers that the military will be forced to reinstate the draft.

On Focal Point today, Fischer drew a direct line between “Big Gay” and women in combat. “Malicious” and “sinister” gay rights activists, he claims, are “trying to destroy the military,” which will ultimately mean “they’re going to have a tough time filling their ranks with qualified soldiers. So they’re going to have to go to the draft, and that means your daughters are going to be pulled into the draft and they could be sent into combat to die, whether they want to do it or not, because of Big Gay.”

Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association said that a change in the Boy Scouts’ ban on gay members would be a “suicide mission” and lead to pedophilia. While speaking to AFA news director Fred Jackson yesterday on Focal Point, Fischer said that gay men are “ten times” more likely than heterosexuals to molest children, and it would be “insanity” to have them “bunking down with your kid at jamboree.”

“To me it’s just suicidal, they are finished, they are done,” Fischer told Jackson, “There is not one loving father in America that ever, ever, ever ought to entrust his son to the Boy Scouts of America.”

After news reports came out today that the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) may drop its national policy banning openly gay members in favor of “passing any decisions on gay membership to the local level,” outrage among Religious Right activists has just begun.

For example, American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer suggested the move would allow Jerry Sandusky-like pedophiles to become troop leaders:

Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, which launched a boycott of UPS after the company stopped donating to the BSA for failing to meet its non-discrimination guidelines, said that the inclusion of openly gay members undermines “the well-being of the boys under their care”:

"The Boy Scouts of America board would be making a serious mistake to bow to the strong-arm tactics of LGBT activists and open the organization to homosexuality. What has changed in terms of the Boy Scouts' concern for the well-being of the boys under their care? Or is this not about the well-being of the Scouts, but the funding for the organization?

"The Boy Scouts has for decades been a force for moral integrity and leadership in the United States. Sadly, their principled stances have marked them as a target for harassment by homosexual activists and corporations such as UPS which are working to pressure the Boy Scouts into abandoning their historic values.

"The mission of the Boy Scouts is 'to instill values in young people' and 'prepare them to make ethical choices,' and the Scout's oath includes a pledge 'to do my duty to God' and keep himself 'morally straight.' It is entirely reasonable and not at all unusual for those passages to be interpreted as requiring abstinence from homosexual conduct.

"If the board capitulates to the bullying of homosexual activists, the Boy Scouts' legacy of producing great leaders will become yet another casualty of moral compromise. The Boy Scouts should stand firm in their timeless values and respect the right of parents to discuss these sexual topics with their children," concluded Perkins.

In an email to members, Perkins claimed that any policy change would have “devastating” consequences:

A departure from their long-held policies would be devastating to an organization that has prided itself on the development of character in boys. In fact, according to a recent Gallup survey, only 42 percent of Americans support changing the policy to allow homosexual scout leaders.

As the BSA board meets next week, it is crucial that they hear from those who stand with them and their current policy regarding homosexuality. Please call the Boy Scouts of America at 972-580-2000 and tell them that you want to see the organization stand firm in its moral values and respect the right of parents to discuss these sexual topics with their children.

The Christian Post, whose editor Richard Land leads the Southern Baptist Convention’s political arm, interviewed a top Southern Baptist who said the potential shift in policy “boggles the mind.”

A source who has knowledge of the situation told The Christian Post last week that the BSA's top executives had met with top leaders at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention, among others, over the last few weeks to inform them of the possibility of this policy shift.

…

"It boggles my mind to think the BSA would make such a move," said an executive in the Southern Baptist Convention who asked not to be identified. "If they have counted the cost of this decision in terms of relationships and numbers, then I believe they have miscalculated that cost."

Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association is now recycling the exact same talking points against allowing women the opportunity to serve in combat that he used opposing the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT).

While Donnelly avoided Fischer’s question about reinstating the draft, she claimed that women will now have to register in the selective service system and said the policy will “harm women, men, infantry battalions and the national security of the United States.”

Donnelly said that sexual assaults may increase because male soldiers will resent the easier “double standards” for women, warning that now the whole military will “fall apart.”

Fischer: There’s also the issue of sexual tension and sexual misconduct, the potential for that is going to be introduced.

Donnelly: If you want to make that even worse than what we’re seeing now, and the rates keep going up and up it’s getting worse and worse, put women into direct combat units, adjust the standards to make it work and then just sit back and watch everything fall apart because double standards are so corrosive to morale. It increases resentment, resentment leads to sexual harassment, assaults or worse, this is a poisonous kind of atmosphere.

Later, Fischer warned of a “complete sexual meltdown” occurring due to “predatory women” trying to sleep with officers, citing CIA head David Petraeus’s affair with a reporter.

But a caller insisted that maybe the Obama administration decided to end prohibitions on women and openly gay service members so they can share foxholes together, an idea Fischer loved: “Just put your predatory females in the same foxhole with a flaming homosexual and nothing is going to happen.”

Fischer: I just think having women in uniform is just a bad idea and here we are seeing one of the reasons. You have got subordinates serving powerful supervisors, you’ve got predatory women, it’s just a recipe for complete sexual meltdown and that’s why we are seeing General Petreaus being a key example of that.

Let’s go to Lee, Bluefield, Virginia.

Caller: I’m gonna have to do something I thought I would never do. I am going to have to give President Obama credit for having a long-range strategy because I just realized why he wanted soldiers to be able to serve in the military and be openly gay, because when it comes time to share a foxhole he will put the openly gay soldiers in the foxhole with the women and that way they’ll both be safe.

Fischer: So Lee’s saying this is a brilliant strategy on the part of President Obama to eliminate sexual tension in the military. Just put your predatory females in the same foxhole with a flaming homosexual and nothing is going to happen. There won’t be any sexual misconduct. That’s President Obama thinking outside the box.

While the Religious Right reacted with apoplecticrage following the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the lifting of the ban on women in combat has brought dejected but relatively subdued responses from conservatives.

Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness said that “lives could be lost unnecessarily” by the new policy, which “will harm men and the mission of the infantry as a whole.” “The administration has a pattern of irresponsible actions like this using the military to advance a social agenda,” she said, “This kind of a social experiment is a dangerous one.”

Faith and Freedom Coalition head Ralph Reed maintained that the Obama administration is “putting women in combat situations is the latest in a series of moves where political correctness and liberal social policy have trumped sound military practice.”

Richard Viguerie’s group claimed that “Obama’s plan to introduce women into frontline combat roles in the U.S. military is a dangerous and irresponsible social experiment, not an opportunity for women to serve their country and advance in their chosen profession.”

Radio talk show host Janet Mefferd on her Facebook page wrote that the move is further proof that the Obama administration is “intent upon undoing this great country” and will “stop at nothing to achieve it.”

Family Research Council vice president Jerry Boykin, who was reprimanded by President Bush after he made anti-Muslim and political speeches while in uniform, called the decision “another social experiment”:

The people making this decision are doing so as part of another social experiment, and they have never lived nor fought with an infantry or Special Forces unit. These units have the mission of closing with and destroying the enemy, sometimes in close hand-to-hand combat. They are often in sustained operations for extended periods, during which they have no base of operations nor facilities. Their living conditions are primal in many situations with no privacy for personal hygiene or normal functions. Commanders are burdened with a very heavy responsibility for succeeding in their mission and for protecting their troops.

This decision to integrate the genders in these units places additional and unnecessary burdens on leaders at all levels. While their focus must remain on winning the battles and protecting their troops, they will now have the distraction of having to provide some separation of the genders during fast moving and deadly situations. Is the social experiment worth placing this burden on small unit leaders? I think not.

Penny Nance of Concerned Women for America said that the “majority of women” don’t care about the ban or want its elimination:

News of Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's intent to lift the long-standing ban on women serving in direct combat is further proof that this administration simply does not care about the issues about which the majority of women care. Once again, their interest on women issues is driven by special interest groups. The point of the military is to protect our country. Anything that distracts from that is detrimental. Our military cannot continue to choose social experimentation and political correctness over combat readiness. While this decision is not unexpected from this administration, it is still disappointing. Concerned Women for America (CWA) and its more than half-a-million members around the country will continue to do all we can to see that our men and women in uniform are governed with the respect and resources needed to do the hard task of fighting for and protecting our freedoms.

“God help us,” lamented Denny Burk of the Southern Baptist Convention, who seemed to suggest that women shouldn’t be in the armed forces at all:

Are the fortunes of women in our country really enhanced by sending them to be ground up in the discipline of a combat unit and possibly to be killed or maimed in war? Is there a father in America who would under any circumstance risk having his daughter shot or killed in battle? Is there a single husband in this country who thinks it okay for his wife to risk being captured by our enemies? To risk becoming a prisoner of war? Is this the kind of people we want to be? Perhaps this is the kind of people we already are. I would sooner cut off my arm than allow such a thing with my own wife and daughters. Why would I ever support allowing someone else’s to do the same? Why would anyone?

What kind of a society puts its women on the front lines to risk what only men should be called on to risk? In countries ravaged by war, we consider it a tragedy when the battle comes to the backyards of women and children. Why would we thrust our own wives and daughters into that horror? My own instinct is to keep them as far from it as possible. Perhaps this move makes sense with an all volunteer force, but what if the draft is ever reinstituted? Are we really going to be the kind of people who press our wives and daughters to fight in combat?

…

Everyone in America ought to be scandalized by this news, but I’m wondering if it will even register on the radar of anyone’s conscience. To the extent that it doesn’t, we reveal just how far gone we are as a people. God help us.

Aaron Ahlert of FrontPageMag said the move is “sure to have deadly consequences” and represents the Obama administration “forcing gender radicalism down America’s throat.”

It didn’t take long for the Obama administration to advance a pernicious piece of its promised radical agenda. Two days after the president laid out his far-left vision during the inauguration, senior defense officials announced that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta will lift the military’s ban on women serving in combat. The move overturns a 1994 provision that prohibited them from being assigned to ground combat units. Panetta has given the various service branches until 2016 to come up with exemptions, and/or make any arguments about what roles should still reman closed to women. Thus, another bit of gender radicalism has been shoved down the nation’s throat through executive fiat — and this one is sure to have deadly consequences.

...

It stretches the bounds of credulity to believe that sexual tension, regardless of the legitimate or illegitimate motivation behind it, would be lessened under front line, life-threatening combat conditions. Nor is it inconceivable to think that close personal relationships of a sexual nature would make some soldiers take the kind of unnecessary risks to save a lover that might not only endanger themselves, but their entire unit.

...

Once again, elections have consequences. Barack Obama has made it clear that part of his progressive agenda includes forcing gender radicalism down America’s throat, absent any input from Congress. Once, the United States military was all about projecting lethal power around the globe to protect America’s interests. Now, it is all about promoting diversity, inclusion and equality of outcome, irrespective of military readiness and cohesion. For progressives, who have elevated political correctness above all else–national security included–such radical egalitarianism is cause for celebration. For Donnelly and countless other Americans, it is anything but. “No one’s injured son should have to die on the streets of a future Fallujah because the only soldier near enough to carry him to safety was a five-foot-two 110-pound woman,” she contends.

Yesterday on Focal Point, American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer marked the anniversary of Roe v. Wade by predicting that America “will have to pay” for legal abortion: “It could be through civil war, it could be through anarchy, it could be through Muslim fundamentalists and terrorists attacks on the United States, but one way or another we cannot escape God’s justice.”

He went on to argue that Planned Parenthood clinics are no different from Nazi death camps. “You see a Planned Parenthood clinic, just think Birkenau, just think Auschwitz, just think Bergen-Belsen,” Fischer said, “because that’s what you are looking at, you are looking at an equivalent of a Nazi gas chamber.”

Later, he repeated the false charge that Planned Parenthood promotes domestic abuse to its members.

Just like otherconservativeleaders, Fischer never found time to watch the video he is so angry about. If he did he would learn that it’s a British anti-violence video that uses an intentionally misleading title to deliver the real message: “Don’t cover it up.”

It has been awhile since Bryan Fischer went off on a good ol' fashioned anti-gay rant on his radio program, but yesterday's inaugural address by President Obama seems to have set him off.

In his remarks, Obama declared that "our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well" and that did not sit well with Fischer, who proclaimed that "homosexuals do not have a constitutional right to engage in sodomy" any more than people have a right to engage in pedophilia, incest, and bestiality ... and that fact that Obama does not realize this only demonstrates that he is appallingly ignorant of the truth about homosexuality and, as such, is embarrassing himself in front of the entire world:

On today's "Focal Point" broadcast, Bryan Fischer made a passing reference to the PBS series "The Abolitionists," citing it as evidence that Christians did not support slavery and, in fact, it was conservative "evangelical Christians like you and me" that lead the fight to abolish it:

When President Obama unveiled his list of recommendations for combating gun violence earlier this week, a few of the items involved efforts to improve mental health services ... which Bryan Fischer claims is part of an effort to portray supporters of the Second Amendment as crazy:

Janet Porter celebrates the ten year anniversary of her Faith2Action organization with the most boring video imaginable.

"Molotov" Mitchell explains to Glenn Beck that he is a pretty big deal which is why Beck needs to change the name of his forthcoming news program to something besides "For The Record," because that is the name Mitchell has been using.

Bryan Fischer says he will henceforth only refer to "assault rifles" as "sporting rifles."

FRC says that Louie Giglio's withdrawal is an example of government persecution and prays that it will end: "Just as we were warned, neither tolerance, nor safety were the aim of activists, but a silenced pulpit and silenced Church ... May God's people arise to pray and effectively withstand government persecution over Biblical beliefs about homosexuality!"

Finally, just how utterly delusional is Glenn Beck? While discussing Sandy Hook Truthers and the like, he warned that conspiracy theorists are dangerous and cannot be trusted!

While preparing up for the 2016 presidential election, Rand Paul visited Israel in a trip that “was arranged by the American Family Association and included 53 prominent evangelicals and conservative activists.”

This wouldn’t be the first time the far-right AFA worked closely with a potential Republican presidential candidate, as the group also put together Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s “The Response” prayer rally that he used as a springboard into the presidential race.

Guests included top Religious Right organizer David Lane, anti-gay activist Tamara Scott of Concerned Women for America and birther leader Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily. Farah praised Paul in his column today and saluted his opposition to foreign aid and marriage equality.

Farah’s participation is not surprising as the American Family Association also peddles similar conspiracies.

Who wants to watch Scott Stapp of Creed on "Life Today" with James Robison? Anyone?

The Evangelical Immigration Table has launched a 40 day prayer effort in support of immigration reform.

We can now add Rep. John Flemming (R-LA) to the list of Republican members of Congress who have no qualms about appearing on Bryan Fischer's radio program.

Speaking of Fischer, he has penned a long "Open Letter to Louis Giglio" calling on his to stand by his anti-gay sermon while Peter Sprigg says that what is happening regarding Giglio is "downright Orwellian."

On the same topic, Janice Shaw Crouse claims that "the Obama administration has thrown down a gauntlet, declaring that anyone who espouses historic, biblical Christian teaching will be prohibited from participation in events in the public square."

Finally, there is honestly no way to coherently summarize this clip of Glenn Beck in which he wildly speculates about how Obamacare will destroy the Second Amendment and force people to euthanize their parents while turning doctors into tools of the Nazi state:

While speaking to WND, Fischer predicted that this development would serve as a catalyst for anti-gay Christian activists to stand up and declare that they tired of "getting pushed around" and will start to push back against these "bullying tactics from the left":

I think more and more Christians and social conservatives are going to say, "Look, I’m tired of us getting pushed around here. You know, the values that we believe in this area are values that were shared by the Founding Fathers. They’re the same set of moral values that built the United States into the greatest, and strongest and most prosperous nation in the world."

I’m tired of backing down on this issue. I’m tired of apologizing for this. I’m tired of Christian leaders who apologize for this. It’s time for us to show some strength and some moxy. So I think we’re going to start to see some push-back against these bullying tactics from the left.

Yesterday, Bryan Fischer responded to the news that pastor Louie Giglio had withdrawn from participation in President Obama’s inauguration by declaring that anti-gay Christians were "the new Rosa Parks" and the victims of modern-day Jim Crow laws.

On yesterday's broadcast, Brian Fischer discussed an incident in Georgia in which a woman used a .38 caliber handgun to shoot an intruder who had broken into her home to make the case for the need for high-capacity magazines on the grounds that just because a simple handgun was effective in this situation, what if someone needed to defend themselves from a "posse"?

To say that Bryan Fischer was outraged over evangelical pastor Louie Giglio's withdrawal from participation in President Obama’s inauguration over an anti-gay sermon he delivered would be a massive understatement, as Fischer has been venting his fury all day on Twitter and then letloose on his radio program, finally declaring that anti-gay Christians are "now the new Rosa Parks" and the victims of modern-day Jim Crow laws:

As is his custom, Bryan Fischer began today's radio program with a reading and discussion from the Bible, in this case a passage from the book of Joel which Fischer said revealed that all natural disasters were sent by God in order to correct humanity just as parents have to spank disobedient children in order to teach them a lesson:

At this point, we don't really expect much from Bryan Fischer ... but still, some basic honesty would be nice.

On his radio program today, Fischer was discussing remarks Sen. Harry Reid delivered on the Senate floor last week blasting the failure by Congress, thanks to House Republicans, to pass a relief package for those impacted by Hurricane Sandy. In his remarks, Reid noted that Congress passed legislation aiding victims of Hurricane Katrina within ten days back in 2005, while victims of Sandy have had to wait over two months for assistance.

Fischer was fully aware that Reid was criticizing Congress for failing to appropriate the money that FEMA needs to carry out relief work but flagrantly misrepresented his statement to claim that Reid was admitting that when President Bush was in charge, Katrina victims received assistance within days, while Sandy victims under Obama have been forced to wait months:

The next time any Religious Right activist wants to complain that we "misrepresent" their views or take their statements "out of context," we'll just point them to this Fischer clip as an example of what real, actual intentional misrepresentation looks like.

We have heard a lot of, well, interestingarguments against a potential ban on assault weapons in order to curb gun violence, and American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer wants to add his two cents. He argues that modern-day assault weapons are protected by the Constitution because they’re “nothing more than a fancy-pants hunting rifle” equivalent to what the Founding Fathers “used to defeat the British.” In Fischer’s eyes, there’s no difference between an AR-15 and a musket.

Fischer: What they’ve done is — whoever controls the language is going to control the debate. They picked the word ‘assault weapon’ to make it sound bad, to make it sound mean. They’re trying to say the Second Amendment does not protect assault weapons; I say exactly the reverse that is exactly what it protects, that is exactly what it was designed to protect. It was designed to protect the right of the American people to keep and bear arms, the same kind of arms, rifles, assault weapons, military-style weapons that were used to defeat the British. They just used their hunting rifles and used them to defend their independence. So the Second Amendment is exactly designed to protect assault rifles, that’s just nothing more than a fancy-pants hunting rifle.